VOGONS


A couple of retros I'm working on.

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Reply 401 of 452, by Hamby

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Vipersan wrote:
Hmm .. got the zyair pcmcia installed ..but all a bit pointless ..as it is only WEP capable. I forget how much things have moved […]
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Hmm ..
got the zyair pcmcia installed ..but all a bit pointless ..as it is only WEP capable.
I forget how much things have moved on sometimes..
🤣

I've got a G3 iMac with a similar problem; i got an airport card for it, and it doesn't support WPA.
If I end all security and encryption on my router, I can connect.

My hoped-for solution is to attach a wireless access point /mobile router to my T5200.
Plug the T5200 into the access point; access it from the iMac with WEP, and attach the access point to my main router using WPA.

probably won't work, but my best shot at connecting them to the network wirelessly.

Reply 402 of 452, by Vipersan

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Thought I'd have a play around with the 5200 ..now I have a 486 cpu and 12mb of memory..
Made 2 partitions on an 8gb CF (fat 32) ..and installed windows 95 ...by floppy
Yep ..it went in .
I also fitted the creative laps sound card prior ..and this was picked up and installed during the installation process..
I have sound..which is nice..
I also fitted that network card I ordered ..it was designed to fit in a 16 bit isa slot ..but since it was short enough ..once the front metal bracket was removed ..I popped this in the 8 bit slot ..
obviously not all contacts are in a slot..those after the gap ..were left floating ..
This was not picked up and installed ..
maybe win95 doesn't know what it is ..as there is a yellow question mark in 'devices' (unknown)...but I did get a driver floppy with it ..
so maybe ..just maybe..
For now I am just happy it installed.
Ian mate ...do you know what is the max resolution the vga out can support ?
I cant select anything above 16 colours ..and it doesn't like 800:600
Maybe a driver issue ..or hardware limitations of the 5200

The other problem I have is the mounting position of the CF ..as the adapter fits directly into the IDE slot..
really this needs to be on a ribbon ..but then I'd need some sort of gender changer I think.
rgds
VS

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Reply 403 of 452, by Vipersan

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Well one problem solved ..
Ordered another IDE to CF adapter from china..
This one has the male socket instead of the female plug ..so a ribbon can be used.
I guess it just means more waiting.
but ..at £1.40 each ..I can wait.
rgds
VS

Reply 404 of 452, by IanB

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Vipersan wrote:
I also fitted that network card I ordered ..it was designed to fit in a 16 bit isa slot ..but since it was short enough ..once t […]
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I also fitted that network card I ordered ..it was designed to fit in a 16 bit isa slot ..but since it was short enough ..once the front metal bracket was removed ..I popped this in the 8 bit slot ..
obviously not all contacts are in a slot..those after the gap ..were left floating ..
This was not picked up and installed ..
maybe win95 doesn't know what it is ..as there is a yellow question mark in 'devices' (unknown)...but I did get a driver floppy with it ..

These NE2000 compatible network cards can be configured in several ways:
1. Jumpers - They aren't fitted on your card
2. Configuration software - This sets things like I/O port address and IRQ number which are stored in NVRAM on the card so the end result is similar to using jumpers
3. Plug & play - This may not work properly when using an 8 bit slot and may even cause 95 to hang.

The first thing to do is run the config software which was supplied with the card to explicity set the I/O port address and IRQ number. The IRQ will have to be one that's available on the 8 bit slot such as 5 or 7. After that, try installing the supplied driver or explictly selecting the built in Win95 "NE2000 compatible" driver. Note you may have to disable plug and play for that driver and explicity specify the resources in device manager.

Vipersan wrote:

do you know what is the max resolution the vga out can support ?

I think it's limited to 640x480 x 16 colours due to the Plasma screen.

Vipersan wrote:

The other problem I have is the mounting position of the CF ..as the adapter fits directly into the IDE slot..
really this needs to be on a ribbon ..but then I'd need some sort of gender changer I think.

I posted a photo of my solution for that type of adapter on the first page of my thread:
download/file.php?id=42501&mode=view

You will need cable mounting 40 way IDC plug & socket and ribbon cable.
The socket and ribbon could be cut from the end of an old IDE cable but the cable mounting plug would need to be something like this:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/40-way-IDC-cable-m … 58/292116913919

The cable has to be the exact length to fit around the adapter board so may take more than one try to get it right.

Reply 405 of 452, by Vipersan

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What you say regarding the vga restrictions makes sense now.
I can't help feeling a bit gutted at this though..
I guess this is one reason why you fitted additional ISA sockets ..so that a vga card could be used ?

..thinking about it logically ..the same restrictions would still apply as dual head (dual vga out) at 2 different resolutions wouldn't even have been conceived back in the day.
oh well ..just a thought.
rgds

Reply 406 of 452, by IanB

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Vipersan wrote:

I guess this is one reason why you fitted additional ISA sockets ..so that a vga card could be used ?

No, I have some other unusual ISA cards such as the EXPRO programmer, an I2C bus analyser and an ECOLINK Econet network interface to network with my Acorn 8 and 32 bit machines.
There is an option in the BIOS to disable the internal video card so I think if you selected that you could plug in a VGA card but I haven't tried it.

Reply 407 of 452, by Hamby

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The video card in the T5200 only has 256k of ram.
800 x 600 is an SVGA resolution, while the video card is a vga card.
640 x 480 x 16 is the maximum resolution / color depth you can get under vga; if you want 256 colors, you can go with a 320 x 240 mode.
(It'll still be 16 greys on the plasma screen)

Reply 408 of 452, by Vipersan

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Came up with another solution to the CF mount ..
This works ..and has the advantage that I could ..should I choose fit a 2.5 inch laptop IDE 44pin HD in place of the CF I guess..
rgds
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Reply 409 of 452, by jaZz_KCS

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@ Vipersan:
This is both correct and I can confirm these behaviors on the T3200SX as well.

For 800x600 you indeed need more than 256kb video memory, which both the T3200SX and T5200 do not have. This is the reason why all the (supposedly compatible) drivers I tried for Win3.1 in this resolution although correctly installed (they detected the chip) but ultimately failed to load upon boot.

Also since everything gets mirrored to both the CRT if attached and the internal Plasma (which will get the signal even if its lid is closed and it is not operating) you are limited to 640x480x16 maximum when operating in this standard mode. Using a dedicated graphics card with more memory and therefore circumventing the internal plasma altogether could be an option. I don't have one.

@ IanB:
I made an internal floppy drive adapter cable from the description in your T5200 modification thread. I assumed due to the fact that the pinout on my T3200SX is the same in regard to floppy this should serve me as well...

In the end I routed cable 9 though the adapter (without actually connecting to anything) and afterwards soldered it to 8 which goes to 5 behind the adapter itself in a loop.
It turns out to be working, albeit not with my Mitsumi.
I have two drives here with which I tested which both go into the opposite extremes when it comes to the "amount of ground pins" 😀 One is a Sony drive which has all pins (except keypin 3). The other one is a Mitsumi which actually has an almost empty row of ground pins, only five pins populated. (And yes, pin5 is amongst those, so my pins 8 and 9 should be connected to ground, then.) There are also no ground pins in the row of pin12-24 which could lead to problems.

Still, the adapter will work (almost) perfectly for the Sony drive with all pins, but not for the Mitsumi that only has 5. (I am using a molex splitter from the HDD by the way, to make sure that I dont have the problem of not having enough ground) The Mitsumi will not let me format anything at all and in the process makes the disk unreadable until reformatted in another drive. And the Sony works perfectly, after grounding pin9 as well it formats 1.44MB floppies as well. (But strangely now I get the "Drive does not support parameters" when I want to format 720kb disks now and it makes them unreadable, so grounding pin 9 kind of switched that problem around?? 😮) It seems that you really need all the ground pins (in the continous row 12-24 at least) present for this to work.

Anywho, it seems the success is really depending on what drive you actually use with after making that adapter. Ah by the way, it turned out that I had to make an adapter anyways although I ordered the 26pin to 34pin converter adapter I mentioned in this thread earlier, but it turned out that the adapter in question featured a completely different pinout as several spots making it incompatible with these devices (it seems to be a later revision of the adapter compared to the one that was linked for me here).

Here's a photo, notice the thoughlooped pin9 that is soldered on the other side, should work still. I hope I made no mistakes with the other pinout.

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Reply 410 of 452, by IanB

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jaZz_KCS wrote:

And the Sony works perfectly, after grounding pin9 as well it formats 1.44MB floppies as well. (But strangely now I get the "Drive does not support parameters" when I want to format 720kb disks now and it makes them unreadable, so grounding pin 9 kind of switched that problem around?? 😮)

Yes, pin 9 mirrors the state of the 1.44MB Hole in the floppy and the T5200/T3200SX uses that to tell if a 720K or 1.44MB floppy is inserted. If you try to format the wrong size it will generate the "Drive does not support parameters" error. As standard floppy drives don't have that signal you have to choose one state or the other but you can always read & write correctly formatted 720K & 1.44MB floppies irrespective of the state of pin 9.

Interestingly, the two of my T5200 machines with original 26 pin working drives always generated that error when I tried to format a 1.44MB floppy with any version of DOS after 3.3x so I can only assume that pin 9 isn't readable on their early PCB revision. (Those machines were probably supplied with DOS 3.3 which doesn't use the BIOS call that generates the error). If you boot to windows 95 or NT which have their own 32 bit floppy drivers then all floppies format OK as that status bit is not part of the standard floppy interface. You will probably find that you can format both sizes on your T3200SX using DOS 3.3x

In order to fix the problem with my original floppy drives and also to avoid the issue when using a home made floppy cable, all my patched BIOS versions for the T5200 and T3200SX have the test of that status bit removed so they will format any floppy with any DOS version. (Obviously you can still only format a floppy according to it's capacity)

jaZz_KCS wrote:

It seems that you really need all the ground pins (in the continous row 12-24 at least) present for this to work.

Yes I think that one of the few "ground" pins on the Mitsumi floppy drives is actually reserved for an additional control signal so is no use as a ground anyway.
An alternative approach would be to split out all the ground signals and other signals that need to be grounded, tie them together and connect to the ground pin on the floppy power connector same as the +5v.

Reply 411 of 452, by Vipersan

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Back with my 510CDT ..
Finally managed to get the scsi pcmcia card I recently aquired installed and working with win98SE-CF
A very nice addition to my pcmcia collection ..and will give me access to any scsi device I connect ..or daisy chain..
It does however require that external scsi devices..
A ..have their own power source..
B ..they can be connected by centronics style scsi connector.

The only 'device' I had that meets this criteria was a DDS tape drive ..
see photo ..
..and to test I installed an early version of backup exec
This version was pre ..the days of 'system' only backup ..and as such works not unlike Explorer in that ..entire directories ..or just files of any type can be uploaded and stored to tape.
For example ..I have a couple of X-box games on the tape currently in the drive.
rgds
I really would like to get hold of a CD/PD scsi drive ..as this would then work as an external CD drive ..OR ..could read my collection of PD cartridge discs.
I have only seen them for sale in the US ,,which is putting me off .
The price is ok ..but the cost of postage and import duty would easily triple the cost.
cest la vie
rgds
VS

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Reply 412 of 452, by Vipersan

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Spotted this on ebay from a US seller ..
Well ..I just couldn't resist it.
Hopefully it will be usefull in my 5200..assuming it gets here ok.
To be fitted with a pcmcia sound card ..and pcmcia xircom network card..
fingers crossed.
rgds
VS

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Reply 413 of 452, by jaZz_KCS

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So a genuine Soundblaster in the T3200SX and a PCMCIA sound card in the T5200? Sounds good!

Also the PCMCIA will open up new possibilities as you then can fit the external Panasonic PCMCIA CDRom drive that you have. 😀

Reply 414 of 452, by Vipersan

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jaZz_KCS wrote:

So a genuine Soundblaster in the T3200SX and a PCMCIA sound card in the T5200? Sounds good!

Also the PCMCIA will open up new possibilities as you then can fit the external Panasonic PCMCIA CDRom drive that you have. 😀

Yep ..that's sort of the plan I had in mind.
Just checked on fleabay..
The isa > pcmcia kit was dispatched an hour ago..
..and hopefully will get here roughly 1st week in April..plus..I may not have to chase this delivery down and pay an extra 'jailbreak' fee..
rgds
VS

Reply 415 of 452, by Hamby

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Vipersan wrote:
Spotted this on ebay from a US seller .. Well ..I just couldn't resist it. Hopefully it will be usefull in my 5200..assuming it […]
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Spotted this on ebay from a US seller ..
Well ..I just couldn't resist it.
Hopefully it will be usefull in my 5200..assuming it gets here ok.
To be fitted with a pcmcia sound card ..and pcmcia xircom network card..
fingers crossed.
rgds
VS

Brilliant!

I'm awaiting my care package from IanB. If I get it by this weekend I'll open up my T5200 and begin upgrading it.
Can't wait!

Reply 416 of 452, by Hamby

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IanB, Could it be possible to modify the VGA bios in the T5200 to be VESA compliant? It won't have the memory resources or functions to do SVGA video modes, and I'm not sure what the advantage would be, if any, but I was just curious.

Reply 417 of 452, by Vipersan

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I saw a Sony-Vaio-PCGA-CD51-External-CD-Rom for sale on fleabay recently so added one to my ever growing collection of retro..
This was bought really with the intention of using on on the T4900CT Laptops ..
Which sadly lack the luxury of CD drives.
I found a suitable driver which allows the OS (win95) to access CDs ..but no luck so far finding a DOS driver install.
This I'd like to correct if possible ..to install games or OS from disc.
can anyone help here ?

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Last edited by Vipersan on 2018-03-24, 10:03. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 419 of 452, by Vipersan

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Hamby wrote:

Did you look in the Vogons driver database?

TBH Hamby ..and I know this will make me sound stupid ..
but I wasn't aware of the driver database.
doh!
I think I found it now ..but how to access ?
Is it the same user and pass as used for the forum ? ..or do I need apply for access ?
Not that there appears to be a dedicated pcmcia/cardbus section ..so I doubt it being there.

rgds
VS